HOMILY FOR THE 18TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME YEAR C
THEME: All is Vanity of Vanities
BY: Fr Anthony C Ohaekwusi
HOMILY FOR SUNDAY JULY 31 2022
We devote our time, talents and treasures to preparing for a future we cannot see, while neglecting the present that is right before our very eyes. Our ambitions, dreams and goals are not meaningless, just as saving treasures for a better tomorrow is not an unreasonable intention. But what is treasure if it is not useful, what is wealth if it cannot solve immediate problems? Leave your country with huge cash, and you will understand how useless it is when you can’t use it unless you change it. Have you held on to something, say shoes or clothes, hoping to use it in the future, only to realize that you didn’t use it and can’t use it again because you’ve overgrown it? But why do we hold on to treasures we can’t use in the face of challenges?
A woman worried her husband to change the mattress in their bedroom because it was too old and worn out. She didn’t want to give him a break, but her husband always replied that he didn’t have the money for a new bed yet. During their wedding anniversary, her husband saved up and decided to surprise her by replacing the mattress with a new one. The wife was delighted with the new mattress, but insisted on finding out what happened to the old one. However, when her husband told her that he had set it on fire because it almost caused problems in their marriage, she panicked and confessed that she had hidden her life savings in it. Little did he know that all this time the solution was buried inside her problem.
As humans, we have countless needs, but it is our ability to prioritize that determines what is vanity and what has quality. The treasures we save become vanity when they lack the ability to solve the problems around us. Selflessness gives quality to what we have, but selfishness reduces everything we save to vanity. One who is RICH, Remains In Constant Hunger if his accumulations cannot satisfy the needs around him. He is like a fool who accumulates what he doesn’t need, preparing for a tomorrow he may not meet. He doesn’t realize that what can’t be used belongs to someone else, because one man’s trash can be another man’s treasure.
Remain lifted and do have a great Sunday
Fr Anthony C Ohaekwusi
